a few debian questions

a few debian questions

[Gregory Nowak]

Hi all.

Well, I got that 8gb drive working in my old box that had its previous
drive go bad.
It's become my spair "play" box, and is currently running debian. When
I get familiar enough with debian, I plan to play with redhat, and
maybe with freebsd if I can install and use that over ssh or telnet or
a serial console. That's all in the future though.

I do have a few debian questions. I will admit that I didn't bother
reading that long debian book on the debian site, and am just flying
with my experience with slackware and some debian hints I picked up
from this list here and there.
My questions are as follows.

1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?

2. Somebody had said here that there was a speakup source package for
debian. If this is correct, and if I need to get a dep package from
question 1 above, then do I also need to get this speakup source
package, or can I just patch the kernel tree with the standard speakup
1.5 tarball? If I need to get this speakup source package, then again,
what package name am I looking for?

3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
newest stable distro? If so, then how?

4. Since the woody disks seemed to have no dhcp client, I had to
install the module for my network card, and to assign it a static
ip. These changes seemed to have carried over into the actual distro
install on the hd.
When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
might break something in the package management system somewhere.
How safe am I messing with things manually, and how do I know if/when
it's time for the system to take care of things? I'm not asking this
question in the way I'd like, but I'm hoping someone here who might
have moved from slackware to debian will understand what I'm trying to
ask.

I would very much appreciate any answers/advise.

Thanks in advance.

Greg


-- 
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org

Re: a few debian questions

[Cheryl Homiak]

Answer to your first question:
I use standard kernels from kernel.org with the cvs speakup patched in. so
yes, you can choose to do that.



-- 
Cheryl

Re: a few debian questions

[Geoff Shang]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Gregory Nowak wrote:

> 1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
> from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?

You can go the deb package route, but I've never done that.  I always just
suck down the kernel source and do what we all do.  Horses for courses, I
guess.

> 3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
> internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
> woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
> newest stable distro? If so, then how?

Woody is the newest stable release.  It's quite possible though that some
packages in Woody are newer than the ones you have.  Since you did a net
install for the bulk of your system, you should already have the FTP sites
set up in /etc/apt/sources.list.  So to make sure you have the newest
packages in the Woody release, do:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

> When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
> right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
> looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
> manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
> strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
> might break something in the package management system somewhere.

I've not made the move across, but I suggest installing the dhcp package
you want (I use dhcp-client, but there are some choices) and then seeing
what the system has done.  There's more than one way to make things work
and the packaging system will usually let you know if it's going to
overwrite something you've done.  The Debian config files are also fairly
liberally commented so it should be pretty easy to follow.

Geoff.

Re: a few debian questions

[Ameer Armaly]

In answer to your first question, I would seriously recomend building a
custom kernel; if you want, you can build it into a deb package with the
"kernel-package" deb.    You can just use the stuff from
linux-speakup.org;it's universal as far as I know.  As to newer distros, you
can replace "stable" in your /etc/apt/sources.list with "testing" or
"unstable", depending on what you want; unstable is always newer than
testing, but buggier too.  As far as net goes, you can build a new kernel
and use it to debootstrap a system; I know that if you install pump, it'll
automatically dhcp your system at startup for you.



Ameer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 8:42 PM
Subject: a few debian questions


> Hi all.
>
> Well, I got that 8gb drive working in my old box that had its previous
> drive go bad.
> It's become my spair "play" box, and is currently running debian. When
> I get familiar enough with debian, I plan to play with redhat, and
> maybe with freebsd if I can install and use that over ssh or telnet or
> a serial console. That's all in the future though.
>
> I do have a few debian questions. I will admit that I didn't bother
> reading that long debian book on the debian site, and am just flying
> with my experience with slackware and some debian hints I picked up
> from this list here and there.
> My questions are as follows.
>
> 1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
> from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?
>
> 2. Somebody had said here that there was a speakup source package for
> debian. If this is correct, and if I need to get a dep package from
> question 1 above, then do I also need to get this speakup source
> package, or can I just patch the kernel tree with the standard speakup
> 1.5 tarball? If I need to get this speakup source package, then again,
> what package name am I looking for?
>
> 3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
> internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
> woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
> newest stable distro? If so, then how?
>
> 4. Since the woody disks seemed to have no dhcp client, I had to
> install the module for my network card, and to assign it a static
> ip. These changes seemed to have carried over into the actual distro
> install on the hd.
> When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
> right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
> looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
> manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
> strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
> might break something in the package management system somewhere.
> How safe am I messing with things manually, and how do I know if/when
> it's time for the system to take care of things? I'm not asking this
> question in the way I'd like, but I'm hoping someone here who might
> have moved from slackware to debian will understand what I'm trying to
> ask.
>
> I would very much appreciate any answers/advise.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Greg
>
>
> -- 
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: a few debian questions

[Cheryl Homiak]

I prefer dhcpcd myself to pump, though both work.
If you install dhcpcd and have any trouble with having your net come up at
boot, you might be missing the "auto" line from /etc/network/interfaces:

For me it's
auto lo eth0

Also, if you ever need to have your isp's dns addresses changed, you'll
want to uncomment a line or so in /etc/dhcpc/config.

I think usually just doing an apt-get and having dhcpcd installed will
pretty well set you up.



-- 
Cheryl

Re: a few debian questions

[Dj Statik]

Greetings,

>
> 1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
> from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?

You could grab the standard sources, and I think this is a good idea, or you
can

apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.22

which is the Debian kernel-source which has various patches applied to it,
note if you want to add other patches such as speakup, grsecurity, selinux,
etc they probalby won't apply to the Debian source because it is already
heavally patched, so I'd suggest just grabbing a vanilla source from
ftp.kernel.org.

>
> 2. Somebody had said here that there was a speakup source package for
> debian. If this is correct, and if I need to get a dep package from
> question 1 above, then do I also need to get this speakup source
> package, or can I just patch the kernel tree with the standard speakup
> 1.5 tarball? If I need to get this speakup source package, then again,
> what package name am I looking for?

apt-get install kernel-patch-speakup

This will install the patch under /usr/src/kernel-patches but I'd probalby
grab the CVS version from speakup itself.

>
> 3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
> internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
> woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
> newest stable distro? If so, then how?

Nope, woody is the latest stable distrib, Debian doesn't hurry when making
their distribs stable, about once every 3 years or so.  If it is just a play
box then I'd suggest the unstable tree, it's usually pretty good, bugs get
fixed pretty quickly, and for the most part it's pretty stable anway, just
hope that libc6 doesn't get broken too often *grins*.

You can do this by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and replacing all "stable"
with "unstable

then do a

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

>
> 4. Since the woody disks seemed to have no dhcp client, I had to
> install the module for my network card, and to assign it a static
> ip. These changes seemed to have carried over into the actual distro
> install on the hd.
> When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
> right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
> looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
> manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
> strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
> might break something in the package management system somewhere.
> How safe am I messing with things manually, and how do I know if/when
> it's time for the system to take care of things? I'm not asking this
> question in the way I'd like, but I'm hoping someone here who might
> have moved from slackware to debian will understand what I'm trying to
> ask.
>

you should edit /etc/network/interfaces, and take out the entry for your
eth0 card, then install dhcp3-client and set up eth0 using that.

it keeps it's files in /etc/dhcp3 I believe and has a start up script under
/etc/init.d
Hope this helps.

>From Mitchell

Re: a few debian questions

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.  See below for my answers.

On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 07:42:19PM -0600, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> Well, I got that 8gb drive working in my old box that had its previous
> drive go bad.
> It's become my spair "play" box, and is currently running debian. When
> I get familiar enough with debian, I plan to play with redhat, and
> maybe with freebsd if I can install and use that over ssh or telnet or
> a serial console. That's all in the future though.
> 
> I do have a few debian questions. I will admit that I didn't bother
> reading that long debian book on the debian site, and am just flying
> with my experience with slackware and some debian hints I picked up
> from this list here and there.
> My questions are as follows.
> 
> 1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
> from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?
> 
Yes, you can use the source from kernel.org.  If you install the
kernel-package Debian package, you can build your new kernel as a local
Debian package.  Building your kernel as a local Debian package isn't
required, but it makes keeping track of kernels easier.

> 2. Somebody had said here that there was a speakup source package for
> debian. If this is correct, and if I need to get a dep package from
> question 1 above, then do I also need to get this speakup source
> package, or can I just patch the kernel tree with the standard speakup
> 1.5 tarball? If I need to get this speakup source package, then again,
> what package name am I looking for?
> 
There is a speakup kernel package for Debian, but it is only in
unstable.  It should eventually move to testing, but it won't ever get
into Woody.  The package is called kernel-image-2.4.22-1-speakup.  It is
an already compiled kernel patched with a recent speakup cvs.
> 3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
> internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
> woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
> newest stable distro? If so, then how?
> 
Woody is the latest stable distribution for Debian.  If you are just
playing with this box, I would go ahead and upgrade it to unstable.
Unstable always has the latest software, but it is the most likely
Debian distro to have bugs.  Since most Debian developers use unstable,
the bugs get fixed quickly.

To upgrade: edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change woody to unstable.
Then run

apt-get update&&apt-get -u dist-upgrade
Be prepared to answer lots of questions and watch your computer appear
to break itself.  If it fails with errors, just run the apt-get -u
dist-upgrade command again.

> 4. Since the woody disks seemed to have no dhcp client, I had to
> install the module for my network card, and to assign it a static
> ip. These changes seemed to have carried over into the actual distro
> install on the hd.
> When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
> right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
> looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
> manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
> strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
> might break something in the package management system somewhere.
> How safe am I messing with things manually, and how do I know if/when
> it's time for the system to take care of things? I'm not asking this
> question in the way I'd like, but I'm hoping someone here who might
> have moved from slackware to debian will understand what I'm trying to
> ask.
> 
the information on your network interfaces is in
/etc/network/interfaces.  After you install a dhcp package, you can edit
/etc/network/interfaces and remove the static information for your
interface and change it to something like

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Usually, you can edit all files in /etc with no problems.  If an upgrade
to a package will replace any file you have changed, it will ask you if
you want to replace the file or keep your version.  Since you are moving
the network card from a module to beeing built into the kernel, you will
probably need to edit /etc/modules and remove the entry for your network
card module.

> I would very much appreciate any answers/advise.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Greg
> 
I've only used Debian, so my answers might be clear.  If so, just ask
and I'll try to do better.

          Kenny